Social networking software has been increasingly adopted as a main driving force behind making business and/or personal connections. A social network is a social structure made up of individuals (or organizations) called “nodes”, which are connected by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, common interest, financial exchange, dislike, or relationships of knowledge. Social network analysis (SNA) views social relationships in terms of network theory consisting of nodes and ties (also called edges, links, or connections). Nodes are the individual user, actors, and/or groups within the networks, and ties are the relationships between the actors. The resulting graph-based structures are often very complex. There can be many kinds of ties between the nodes. Research in a number of academic fields has shown that social networks operate on many levels, from families up to the level of nations, and play a critical role in determining the way problems are solved, organizations are run, and the level to which individuals succeed in achieving their goals.
In its simplest form, a social network is a map of specified ties, such as friendship, between the nodes being studied. The nodes to which an individual is thus connected are the social contacts of that individual. The network can also be used to measure social capital (i.e., the value that an individual gets from the social network). These concepts are often displayed in a social network diagram, where nodes are the points and ties are the lines.